Sunburn
by Petrarch's Pillowcases
Summary: [MichaelJan]  It's a bit like staying in the sun too long.  If you get too comfortable, you get burned.


**Sunburn**

Disclaimer: The Office belongs to NBC. I don't own a lot of the material mentioned here, so if you recognize it, it's not mine. I'm certainly not making any money.

SpoilersThrough Money. Maybe for the Deposition, if you really squint.

A/N: A Jan character study. Warning for sex talk and second person. Constructive crit is always welcome.

* * *

When you were ten years old, you went to the Caribbean for the first time. Your mom bought you your very first two piece bathing suit, and you didn't take it off for the entire week. You wanted to come home like the women in your mother's magazines, gold and thin and sparkling.

Baby oil, someone said, makes for the smoothest tan a girl could have. You spent your allowance money and bought it by the bottle. You lay out on the sand with your Betty and Veronica comics, and every so often, the water would lap at your toes.

You came home in sun-shock. Your mother rolled you out of the plane in wheel chair, and you don't remember when you stopped shivering.

(In fact, you're not sure this happened at all. It is one of those things that you think might have been a dream, and it comes to you, for some reason, when you fall asleep after sex.

Most nights you just forget it and move closer to whoever's sleeping next to you.)

* * *

You can't take your boyfriend out to dinner.

He likes cozy Italian restaurants and diners that are open until two a.m. You like Cajun food, Indian food, Moroccan food, anything that simmers and makes your tongue burn. Your ex-husband used to say that spice is an aphrodisiac, and you believed him, out of love or stupidity. You developed a love for kisses over vindaloo curry and tasteless jokes involving jalapeño peppers and certain parts of the male anatomy.

It's funny. You can't get out of that habit.

You settle on Chinese food-- greasy enough for him, hot enough for you, sort of. You're not used to compromise, but you're dating Michael Scott. You can't rationalize anything anymore.

But you're going to try this. Your tan from Jamaica is starting to fade, and things are going well, mostly. You haven't thrown him in front of a train. Yet.

He insists that you share a plate of egg rolls. Two bites into the first one and--

"That's what she said."

"Michael, no one said anything."

"Oh, puh-lease. You were all licking your lips and sucking and…"

"Michael, we're…"

"If I didn't know any better, I would think that you were trying to seduce me."

You sigh. He's smiling at you, and you were going to berate him, but…

"I already have seduced you, Michael."

He chuckles. "I just thought you had some kind of idea for the ladies' bathroom. You had that look in your eye. You know, Dwight says that women are like feral animals…"

When did you sign up to date the entire Scranton office?

You tuck a piece of hair behind your ear. "You can have the last egg roll."

And, of course, he's messy and there are pieces of cabbage all over the table and he's licking the duck sauce off of his fingers and oh god, it's kind of hot because that man can do things with his tongue which you're not going to think about when you're in public and he ordered some kind of noodle, didn't he, and that will make things worse and you're shifting in your seat and

He smiles. Your foot brushes his. You wonder how fast you can eat without getting indigestion.

* * *

Six months before you finalized your divorce you found a box of sex tapes hidden in the second bedroom. You were hoping that room would be a nursery, but when that was no longer an issue, you stashed cartons of cigarettes in the empty closet. It didn't occur to you that you weren't the only one with a secret.

You watched them when you couldn't sleep. There were Japanese school girls touching each other and short, pleated shirts pushed above the waist. You bought pints of ice cream and cried because he would rather masturbate to these girls than have sex with you.

Fine, you thought. You finished the Cherry Garcia and shoved your hand into your pajama bottoms.

* * *

You have marathon make-out sessions with Michael. Against the door of your hotel room, waist-deep in the ocean, even in the women's locker room of the lap pool. You would be ashamed of the fact that you're acting like a teenager, but you need to get this out of your system.

And you're aware, for the first time in years, of French kissing. It's strange. Kissing was always something you lumped into sweet or fast or passionate or steamy or soft or sometimes just pathetic.

You feel like you should be giggling when you come up for air. First base? Second? Third?

He buys you a stuffed monkey with dreadlocks. It could be the ugliest thing you've ever seen, but at least it's not a coconut bra. You tell him you'll thank him after dinner, in the bedroom.

(You come home with: that monkey, five leis, a grass skirt, something that resembles a hookah, a Bob Marley CD, a pack of condoms, two beaded necklaces, five pairs of sunglasses, and a pretty anklet that you bought for yourself. You accidentally leave your cigarettes in the hotel room.)

* * *

The morning after Michael closed the deal (and several… other things happened), you drove to the Museum of Modern Art before going home to your apartment. There was this painting that you wanted to see, but you couldn't remember who painted it or even what it looked like. You just knew that something would untangle if you could see some kind of artistic representation of your situation.

You were looking in the wrong place. After three hours in the museum, you gave up, went home, and found The Rocky Horror Picture show on TV. You lit a cigarette and laughed through the ashes.

Damnit, Janet.

* * *

You take a deep breath.

"I need to do something for myself. I bought shoes, got a manicure, paid full price for a Broadway show, practically cleaned out Victoria's Secret. I still don't sleep at night because… well, I must be pretty fucked up to get dumped by _Michael Scott_. I don't think he's ever ended a relationship in his life. I don't think I need to get back together with him, I mean, he made it pretty clear that I made him miserable, I just need to stop thinking about it. What is it about relationships that I can't do? I picked up the box set of Sex and the City last weekend and spent a whole day watching it. Pathetic, right? I thought that maybe I could learn something from it because, hell, those women sleep with a lot of losers. But none of them are _my _loser. And at this point in my life, I don't have time to dick around with guys. But I don't think I could handle another divorce. I think… I guess what I'm saying is that I'm thirty-nine years old, divorced, in love with a fucking employee, I own too many shoes and more sex tapes than I'd like to admit to, and it's about damn time that something… anything… stuck around for me."

You stop. Think. You get the hell out of there.

Dr. Perry is still smiling.

* * *

For about five minutes in college, you thought you were pregnant.

It was spring break, and you downed Jell-O shots on dare. You got to five when you slept with that guy in your economics class, and you were at eight when you passed out.

You woke up on a beach chair wearing only a towel and a bikini top. He was gone, and you realized that you had cried in your sleep. You were sunburned all over your back and shoulders.

That day, you didn't leave that chair. You ordered virgin daiquiris and thought about dropping out of school and living in bungalow. You could raise the baby with an island man who played the steel drum, and you'd never be the boss of anyone but maybe that was okay.

You fell asleep to the rhythm of names. Maria? Rebecca? Michelle?

* * *

You love New York City in the summer.

You're going in for the first time since you moved to Scranton, and you're not sure if you miss it. Time's Square is full of tourists, but uptown is quiet and warm and hazy. You take the wrong subway just so you can walk through the park.

Which was a bad idea, in retrospect. Michael's changed your cell phone ring to something by the Pussycat Dolls.

"Hey, buttercup. Are you at the lady doctor now?"

"Hi. Um, my appointment's not for another forty minutes. But I am in New York, and I'm about three blocks away."

"Awesome. So… what exactly do you do in these appointments? Do you like… compare or something?"

You sigh. "Michael, it's just a routine check-up. A gynecologist is just like a dentist, but for a different body part. It's just to make sure that nothing's wrong."

"Well, I hope I'm not bad news for your squeezebox."

"My… what?"

"The Who? Mama got a squeezebox? Get with the program."

"Since when do you listen to The Who?"

"It… was on the radio," he mutters, and you can picture it-- him accidentally tuning away from Z100 and tapping out the beat against the steering wheel, out of sync with the music.

"Michael, that song is about an accordion."

"No, no. Most definitely _not_. First of all, Daddy never sleeps at night, and what kind of woman would play the accordion for the entire night? Those things are as big as small children except like… made of lead. Second of all, in and out and in and out? I mean, I think that meaning is pretty clear. But… well, I dunno. It could just mean squeezing the upstairs. I guess you could squeeze both of them, maybe at the same time?"

This is adorably obscene. You're horrified, but you're smiling so much that lose yourself for a moment and almost get run over by a taxi cab.

"Right," you say, trying to get your thoughts out of the gutter. You clear your throat. "Ok, this shouldn't take too long, so I'll be home for dinner. Are you going to pick something up or should I?"

"I'll order a pizza. So, if the squeezebox means…"

"Michael, I think I'm going to get ready for my appointment now. I'll call you when I'm on my way home."

"Sure. Love you, Jan."

"Bye."

(When did you become this woman? Two months back together and you're stealing his toothpaste and letting him buy you bras--DD cup-- in ridiculous colors. You're not thinking of working, you swear, not even a cashier job at a drug store. And now you're blushing because you're on the Upper East Side and trying to rationalize your favorite sexual positions and hating yourself for, well, do you need a reason anymore? You're going to lie to your gynecologist about work and… you don't like that. You just want to go home and spend the evening with Michael. )

You get a clean bill of health. Michael promises you a new thong, and you tell him that you love him and you stay up until two a.m. fucking and watching his favorite episodes of Saturday Night Live. You kiss him on the cheek just to make him blush.

* * *

You got a box of chocolates for yourself on Valentine's Day.

The cashier watched you as you opened it and picked out all of the dark chocolates ones and devoured them. You considered buying truffles too, but that was borderline pathetic.

_It was borderline at best…_

You didn't eat dinner that night. You took a few sleeping pills and didn't touch the TV, couldn't face Casablanca or Sleepless in Seattle or whatever. You dreamt about tapping at the windowpane and writing that you wanted to be princess when you grew up. You dreamt about castles in the middle of the city and songs from Disney movies that all sounded the same.

You used to think that a kiss on Valentine's Day meant good luck for the rest of the year.

* * *

The problem with Michael, you realize, is that he knows too much.

He knows that you like highways and are allergic to strawberries. He knows that your real first kiss was with a girlfriend (for practice, of course), and he knows about the sex tapes you found and the fights you had with your sister, not the fake one in Scottsdale. You don't understand why you keep telling him things, if it's just some kind of post-orgasmic comfort or something else entirely.

Maybe it's because he's really cute with his face pressed against the pillow and his hair all mussed.

You untangle yourself from his arms and sit up. He's sound asleep and muttering to himself, and you listen for a moment and hope to hear your name.

He doesn't say it.

It takes a while for you to remember things at this hour. You need to call your lawyer and buy those microwavable pizzas that Michael likes. You should probably get another pair of sweatpants, and you're going to have to sell the Porsche sometime this week.

You get out of bed and sit by the window. You consider a cigarette, dismiss the thought, and hum the Whose Line Is It Anyway? Irish drinking song under your breath. It's going to be warm today, too warm for October, and if you do nothing but lie in the sun all day, you could actually get a tan. The idea of tanning in Scranton is so absurd that you almost laugh, but then you remember that Michael is still sleeping. And that you're still in love with him.

There is something else that Michael knows:

Your first real boyfriend dumped you with a postcard. You cried for two weeks and got pity money from your mother and a glass of red wine from your sister. She was older, more experienced, and she told you that falling in love is a bit like staying in the sun for too long. If you get too comfortable, you get burned.

It made so much sense to you back then, and you remembered it when you signed your divorce papers. But now you're not sure you believe it. You're not sure of a lot of things.

You can hear Michael stirring behind you. You lean forward a bit and watch him, just to see if he'll really stay up, holding your breath. His alarm won't go off for another two hours, and he's so… Michael, smiling and reaching into the warm space you left behind.

You're back in bed before he opens his eyes.


End file.
